So, lately, I had quite some time upon my hands and I thought: Let’s learn a new skill!
I thought it was going to be really easy, and in a way it also is. It just takes a looooot of time.
Anyway, you’ve actually come here to get an answer to your question. Is it really worth it?
That, unfortunately, depends on you! It can be really worth it if you really like to make things yourself AND if you’ve got a lot of time.
If you are more for some quick recipes, then you might be disappointed and pick another option. Just make sure you read the whole article though, making your own tofu might be something for you anyway!
For the taste itself you might not want to do it. Tofu is quite bland and therefore, you won’t really taste a big difference.
The difference lies in the price. As you might know, making things from scratch mostly is cheaper.
To make Tofu you just need two things: Soybeans and a coagulant. Both are not that expensive. With a cost of around US$2 for one pound of beans.
And this is for the organic beans. A lot of soybeans are GMO, so if you are quite against this, you might want to make your own tofu too.
Let’s have a look at how to make it!
Making Soy Milk at home
Nope, you haven’t read it wrong, we’re first going to make soy milk!
This is going to be the first part of making our Tofu.
With 1.5 Cups of soybeans, you get a block of tofu for about 2 people. If you want more you can double or triple or quadruple it of course.
Soy Milk
If you are used to buying soy milk at the supermarket, this might be a good time to make the switch! Store-bought soy milk very often is sweetened, which you don’t always want. This soy milk is unsweetened and therefore will have a different taste, but you’ll get used to it. Don’t worry. And if not, you can always make tofu!
- Prep Time 8 Hours
- Cook Time 30 Minutes
- Total Time 8.5 Hours
Ingredients
- 1.5 Cups/ 300g of Soybeans
- 8 Cups / 1.8l of Water
Instructions
- The first step is going to be a little tedious already. You're going to have to soak the soybeans for 8 hours into water. This is not the water from these 8 cups though. Just in case.
- Drain the water
- Put the beans into a blender
- Add water and blend
- With a cheesecloth and sieve drain the water out of the crushed beans into a pan that's big enough
- Squeeze the bean residue really well
- Boil the liquid you've got out of the beans and keep on a simmer for about 20 minutes. Make sure that you stir frequently
- And now you've got your own soy milk!
Notes
You’ll see that after these 8 hours your beans will have swollen a lot, so be sure that you put them in a big bowl.
Most blenders won’t be able to fit all of the beans at the same time, so make sure that you add the beans and water gradually.
If you don’t have a cheese cloth at home, a kitchen towel will do too. I’ve bought a cheese cloth though and I do have to say that it really saved me a lot of frustration. These cloths are a bit smaller and easier to handle. And they only cost a couple of bucks!
This soy milk will be a lot different than your processed soy milk, so make sure that you get used to the flavor in the beginning. If not, you can always add a sweetener.
Make sure you let the pan cool down first before you put it into the fridge. The milk will stay good for about 4 days.
Making your own tofu at home
Alright, so back to topic.
Well, it must be said that we’ve always been on topic. We do need this soy milk to make our tofu.
If you are here for the tofu and not for the milk, please discard the instruction of boiling the milk for 20 minutes. We will need to boil the milk, but not for 20 minutes to make our tofu.
And as I said at the beginning of the article, you can take a little shortcut here as well.
If you don’t feel like waiting 8 hours for the beans to soak, nor to put them in a blender. You can just buy some soy milk at your supermarket and this will be perfectly fine as well.
You do have to remember though that this will mean that it might not be completely organic or sugar-free!
Tofu Making
- Total Time 30 Minutes
- Serves 2 People
Ingredients
- 8 Cups / 1.8 l of soy milk
- Coagulant: 1 Tbs Nigari or Gypsum, 4 Tbs lemon juice or vinegar
Instructions
- So we've got our soy milk from the recipe above here
- we're going to bring that to a boil
- and let it simmer for 10 minutes
- scoop off the foam and let it rest for about 3 minutes
- add your coagulant, if you've choosen for nigari or gypsum, you need to dissolve this into little warm water
- the mixture now will curd, leave it for about 10 - 15 minutes
- strain the mixture into a box of some kind with holes, if you have a press you can put it in here
- put some weight on it and let it rest for about 30 minutes
- and then you've got a block of tofu!
Notes
For how long you press your tofu depends on you. If you like a soft block of tofu, about 15 minutes will do already. If you want it firmer than you put some weight on it for 45 minutes.
If you use Nigari, make sure that you put the block of tofu in a bit of water afterwards. This is to make sure that you don’t get the tangy flavor out of the tofu. I never had any issues with it, but some people don’t like the taste of Nigari.
Another thing I’d like to mention, I’ve read in many articles that the curdling of the soy milk happens at 167 degrees F, or 75 degrees C. If that works for you, great! However, in my experience that didn’t really work. I didn’t have a thermometer and it just didn’t curdle. Instead I let it cool down for 3 minutes and after putting in the coagulant, I brought it up to a boil again. Which worked perfectly!
And one last note. If you don’t want to make your own soy milk, you can just buy your soy milk from the grocery store.
In the picture below you can see an image of my own tofu, just to let you show that I’m not making things up here ;).
Did I think it was totally worth it?
Well, I’m not 100% sure. I do have to say that it was quite rewarding eating something that I made myself from scratch. I was really aware of the process and what it takes to make your own tofu. Therefore I gained a deep respect for people who do this professionally.
I made a delicious chicken tofu shawarma out of it.
What is your opinion at the moment?
Are you looking forward to make your own tofu?
Nama-stay wonderful everyone!
Hello Virenda, Thanks a lot for sharing this wonderful piece of information. I am very glad for this opportunity coming across this article. I really enjoyed going through every bit of this article. Personally, I think it is 100% worth it making your own tofu because one can make some money from it and the personal enjoyment is another thing. Please will it be possible for this tofu to be done in Africa??
Hi Igbunu,
It actually is possible to make tofu in Africa! I’m not sure where you are from, but do you know there is something called Wara? It’s almost the exact same as tofu, only you need to use soybeans, rather than milk!
You can find how to make vegan Nigerian Wara on Youtube! Hope that helps you out! And good luck with your tofu making!
Who could have guessed of home-made tofu? I really like the uniqueness of this blog post and the initiative altogether. Guess I now have my go-to blog post for making tofu. Anyways, I’d like to point out that your text is not evenly spaced, making it really difficult to read the article. Asides that it was really great reading your write-up. Have a nice day.
Hi Bit Guy,
Thank you for your suggestion! I’ve now added more space into the paragraphs, hopefully, this improved its readability!
Let me just start with this. I Am A Huge Tofu Fan! In fact, my family and I love tofu, soya milk and even soya beancurd! This recipe really caught my eye as you have given me such an in-depth recipe on how to make our own Tofu and also soya milk! I am very health conscious now as I am aware of the negative response in over-consuming of soya products, so your recipe really helped gave me insight on how to go about this! Your recipe is well thought of and easy to follow (which to me is the most important element in every recipe). I just need to make a quick visit to the store for some soya beans and I’m all ready to try this out!
I really would like make this for my family and I think I will make the soya milk in a huge batch so that i can use it to make my Tofu and also have a little extra soya milk to consume! I have one question. I understand that the soya milk will be a little blend in taste, so will it be ok if I add a little bit of honey or sugar into my soya milk? Will this effect the outcome of my tofu if I use the soya milk to make the tofu?
Hi Joe, as long as it’s not for drinking the soy milk, I wouldn’t add anything just yet. When your tofu becomes too sweet, it might lose its multifunctionality! Tofu is great in soaking in all the flavors it gets exposed to, so make sure that you keep it simple! If I make tofu with store-bought milk, I make sure it’s unsweetened.
If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask them!
Hey Virendra. Very interesting article. I’m trying to eliminate animal ingredients form my diet and posts like this are extremely helpful. To be fair I had no idea that its possible to prepare Tofu inhouse in such easy way. Yet it seems a bit time consuming, so I won’t probably doing this every day but very curious to try and check is it better that one from shop.
Hi Cogito!
Thank you for your comment! It is really time-consuming yeah, I love doing it and I do have the time. However, if you don’t have that time, you can easily do it with store-bought milk too! Just so you know.
How do you get quality tofu?
Well, I feel that when you make tofu yourself, you probably already have a good quality tofu. However, when you do it yourself you’ll probably have to see the type of soy beans that you are using. Organic Non-MGO is what I’ve been using so far. But it depends on what is available for you. Whenever you make something yourself, it is low or has no conservatives at all, making it a good quality product.
But as you can read in the article, I’d rather buy my tofu in the supermarket because the process is just too much for what you get. And in general organic stores, you will find a good quality block of tofu.